


in the eye of the storm

by clarewithnoi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Banter, Battle, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Humor, Idiots in Love, Marriage Proposal, Swearing, banter in the midst of battle which is quite the dynamic, inappropriate place for a proposal, jily, this is slightly nonsense but you know what I think we all need some of that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 22:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29875035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarewithnoi/pseuds/clarewithnoi
Summary: a battlefield is, for the most part, not considered the most romantic of settings in which to propose to your girlfriend.someone might want to tell this to James Potter.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 28
Kudos: 75





	in the eye of the storm

**Author's Note:**

> just a little ditty I wrote before bed! the writing bug hit me tonight and hit me HARD. I tried out a new style as well - less introspection and wall-of-text, more dialogue! thought it'd be a fun exercise. LMK what you think!
> 
> enjoy...

She’s heard him wrong. She’s sure of it.

She’s either heard him wrong or he’s joking, or possibly some combination thereof, because there is absolutely no way he’d say something so ludicrous in a situation like this.

 _“_ _What?!”_

“You heard me!” James yells. His voice just barely clears the cacophony of brick exploding, shouting, and footsteps thundering on pavement that currently overwhelms her ears. He pauses for a moment behind the remains of a stone wall to shoot her a grin. “I said— _WATCH OUT!”_

Lily throws her body to the side and narrowly misses a dark red stream of light that hisses and crackles like bottled lightning. She lands on cobblestone, hard, forearms and belly and knees, red hair flying past her face and settling belatedly in a halo around her head.

“You alright?”

He can’t possibly have just said that. Right? She must have heard him wrong.

New, jagged scrapes on her palms make her hiss as she hoists herself up onto her hands and looks at James, who’s only a few feet behind her, a veritable poster boy for modern wizard combat with his shirt untucked and his order robes tied loosely at the waist. He’s casting hexes in quick succession: _incendio, flagrante, petrificus totalus._

“Lily!” He calls again, worried this time. “Are _—_ you _—alright?”_

Surely, it was some sort of trick of her ears, or a mix-up of words. “No,” she groans.

 _“_ _Fuck—_ stay where you are, baby, don’t _—_ ”

“ _No,_ no—I mean, _yes!_ I’m fine, I just—shit, fucking hell!”

The words die in her throat as she casts a quick shield charm against a barrage of ugly-looking curses, which gives her enough time to scramble to the nearest barricade. It comes in the form of a pile of rubble that was probably once a lovely, stately Essex home.

“What was that?”

The front part of Lily’s rubble explodes in the blowback from a missed hex. She inhales dust and begins to hack and spit, raising her sleeve to her nose as her eyes water.

“I’m going to— _ack—_ need you to—to repeat that!” She coughs. “What you— _blech—_ just said!”

“Er, I said, ‘are you alright’?”

She groans. _Ponce._ “Before that!”

“Oh, right—hang on just a tick!”

It’s probably a good instruction, because there are two Death Eaters conjuring fire that she has to deal with. A bit uncreative, Lily thinks, because it’s not like they didn’t all learn to counter that in fifth year at Hogwarts.

“AGUAMENTI!” She screams, and from her wand erupts a tsunami. It puts out the fires immediately—but it doesn’t stop there.

 _Hope you two can swim_ , she thinks.

As if from thin air, James appears next to her, crouching with a soothing palm on her spine and a smile unfit for a battlefield. He rubs her back as she coughs, and with the other hand, he curses a Death Eater’s blood to acid.

“I _said,”_ he smirks, “I want you to marry me this weekend.”

That’s what she thought.

“This _weekend?”_ She hisses. “James, it’s one thing to propose, but _this weekend?!”_

“Is that a no?”

The very idea of this is offensive, so Lily takes her eyes off of the small square in which they’re currently fighting to send him a glare. “You know full well I’m going to marry you, James Potter. I just didn’t expect you to propose something so short-notice.”

He shrugs. “I’ve known I was going to marry you since Third Year. The finer points don’t really matter to me so much.”

Is it suddenly warmer on this battlefield, or is she melting?

“James…”

“DEATH TO THE MUDBLOODS AND THE BLOOD TRAITORS!” A voice booms from about twenty meters in front of them. It’s a tall figure in Death Eater robes, wand held high to release the Dark Mark into the afternoon sky.

“Piss off!” James shouts back. “I’m having a fucking moment here, you cunt!”

 _I’m going to marry this man,_ Lily thinks.

“Quick—let’s find Sirius. I think I saw him over to our left a few minutes ago.”

James’s eyes light up. “Perfect! I can ask him to be my best man.”

They make their way to the barely-standing ruins of a corner store, now mostly just the brick-and-mortar remains. James takes over the attacks as they run, and Lily the counters and shields; they’ve done this so many times before, it’s as natural as breathing.

They find Sirius in the heat of at least five separate low-level duels, dodging and leaping like an acrobat, shit-eating grin plastered firmly on his face. He lives for this type of excitement. The only thing that would make it better is if he were riding on his motorbike while doing it.

James and Lily take cover a few feet away from Sirius’s dancing form.

“Oi, Padfoot!” James yells. “Got a question for you!”

“Little busy at the moment, dear!”

As if nothing more than shooing away a pest, James sends _one, two, three_ Death Eaters into unconsciousness with a round of incredibly well-placed hexes. He turns to send Lily a wink over his shoulder.

 _Damn you_ , she thinks. _I’m fucking melting._

Seemingly with his point now proven, James tries once more to regain Sirius’s attention.

“PADFOOT!” He hollers.

Sirius whips around to look at him, exasperated. He casts a shield charm sideways like it’s the most casual thing in the world, and then he throws his arms up, surrounded by an undeniable air of, _you have to do this NOW?_

“WHAT?”

“…Be my best man?”

Curses bounce off of the shield, one after another after another. Remus arrives suddenly to the little makeshift bunker. He’s covered in ash and small cuts. He takes one look at Sirius, and then at James and Lily, and tackles them all to the ground.

“What on earth are you all doing?! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, _but there’s a bit of a war on!”_

“Sorry, sorry!” James effuses. “I was asking Padfoot if he’d be my best man. I asked Lily to marry me this weekend.”

“Oh, well, then by all means carry on. Mazel Tov.”

Remus’s palpable eye-roll is interrupted by the ceiling above him beginning to crumble, which he has to deal with before he can continue with any cursing or hexing. During this, Sirius crawls from his side to sit next to James and Lily, looking bewildered.

“Alright, Sirius?” Lily asks.

“Are you two not already married?” Sirius looks between the two of them. When they both shake their heads, he turns to face Remus. “Strange. I could have sworn I woke up the other morning in a tuxedo. I’ve been having the most vivid dreams lately…”

“So that’s a _yes_ , Padfoot?”

“Of course!”

“And you, Moony? You’ll be in it as well?”

Remus is in the process of yelling _“Impedimenta!”_ when James asks, so he simply gives a thumbs-up with his other hand, eyes trained on two figures who are now moving at half-speed.

“Brilliant!” James cries.

All of a sudden—and in the midst of a touching moment—Bellatrix Lestrange’s cackling laugh emerges from somewhere off to their right, and it sends a mighty scowl to Sirius’s face. Remus holds him back from leaping out from the impromptu bunker.

In spite of all this, James turns back to Lily, eyes twinkling.

“See?” He says. “Easy! Groomsmen are sorted. And I assume you’ll have Marlene and the lot for bridesmaids.”

Lily fires a spell over his shoulder. What had just been a Death Eater’s wand is now a long, slithering worm.

“Certainly won’t have Tuney,” she muses.

“Nice one, Lily!” Remus shouts.

“Cheers, Remus!”

Sirius conjures a ball of flame about three meters in front of them and shoots it into the square, but not before laughing loudly at the mention of Lily’s sister. They’d met only once, at a pub when Lily was still trying to maintain some semblance of a relationship with her sister and her new, grotesque husband, and the whole affair ended with Vernon Dursley’s mustache turned a violent shade of green.

“And you’re better for it!”

As utterly ridiculous as it is, Lily feels laughter bubbling up in her chest, warm and bright and glittering. _Marry me this weekend,_ James had said. Not even _marry me_ , but _marry me now._

“Alright,” she sighs finally, because there was really never any question what her answer would be, “this weekend it is, I suppose.”

James’s face is fireworks when she looks to it, all different colors of joy, one giving way to the next. Each is brilliant and blinding. The thought that _she_ did this—that it’s the thought of marrying _her_ that makes him look like this—nearly knocks her flat.

They lean toward each other, and she can see the kaleidoscope of his eyes, feel his breath on her face—

_BOOM._

Screams and swears follow the sound of what has to be a car exploding, loud enough that Lily and James jump apart, and strong enough that a burst of heat hits her even behind the small wall. She stares at him instead, taking in the contours of his face, the way his jaw sets as his eyes flicker to the damage. His hand is tightening around his wand, white-knuckled.

“I’m going out,” Lily murmurs. His eyes meet hers once again. Her magic feels hot in her veins, searing, ready to shake the earth. “Will you cover me?”

James threads one hand into the red waterfall of her hair and yanks her forward by the back of her neck to meet his lips with hers. It’s a fierce kiss, born of desperation, push and pull and lips and teeth. The way he’s moving his mouth, Lily almost thinks he’s praying.

He pulls away far too soon, but he’s smiling.

“Until the very end,” he replies.

Lily rises, throwing a wink in his direction as she prepares to dash forward into the fray. His face is streaked with ash and soot, and there’s a long cut running from the middle of his forehead to his left ear, bleeding down the side of his face and just a little bit onto his glasses. He’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. Her heart aches for it.

In front of her, Death Eaters are throwing curses left and right. Their faces are obscured by black cloaks and headdresses. She’s struck, not for the first time, by their cowardice—their facelessness, their anonymity, their weakness—and raises her wand to throw up a shield.

She’s their worst nightmare; a muggle-born woman from nothing, now engaged to one of the oldest magical lines in England. She’s what they have to fear.

A _cruciatus_ flies toward her face and forces her to duck sideways. When she and James married, she thinks, she’ll hyphenate, and no one will be able to erase her from this world. It will be her past and her present.

 _“Incarcerous!”_ She bellows, and a Death Eater chokes on the counter-curse as he falls to the ground. He’s bound from head to toe. Two more emerge from behind that one with wands pointed toward her, and she readies herself to immobilize them, but they both drop to the ground, writhing and screaming.

She turns her head for a split-second glance at whoever cast the spells. It's James, staring at their bodies with murder in his eyes, wand aloft, furious. She turns back around and advances. It’s impossible to be afraid; not with him here. The fear has melted in her blood, turned to fire. It sets her ablaze.

“COME ON!”

Lily hears his voice behind her, deep and smooth and solid, rallying their friends to push forward. He’s hope incarnate. He’s to be her husband.

 _Voldemort might as well surrender now,_ she thinks, _we’ve already won._

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed :) please leave a comment, I'd love to read it!
> 
> as always, feel free to come say hi on Tumblr, @clare-with-no-i! it's where I post most of my nonsense.
> 
> xx


End file.
